London Labour and the London Poor is an extraordinary work of investigative journalism, a work of literature, and a groundbreaking work of sociology.

It originated in a series of articles for a London newspaper and grew into a massive record of the daily life of Victorian London’s underclass. Mayhew conducted hundreds of interviews with the city’s street traders, entertainers, thieves and beggars which revealed that the “two nations” of rich and poor were much closer than many people thought. By turns alarming, touching, and funny, the pages of London Labour and the London Poor exposed a previously hidden world to view.

The first-hand accounts of costermongers and street-sellers, of sewer-scavenger and chimney-sweep, are intimate and detailed and provide an unprecedented insight into their day-to-day struggle for survival. Combined with Mayhew’s obsessive data gathering, these stories have an immediacy that owes much to his sympathetic understanding and highly effective literary style. In its imaginative power the work can justly be regarded as the greatest Victorian novel never written.

In this audio guide, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst of Magdalen College, Oxford, who edited and selected this new edition, introduces Henry Mayhew, his vast project and the people he wrote about and the society which eagerly consumed his words. Click on the link to listen to each audio clip.

1. Introducing Henry Mayhew, a writer who, until embarking on London Labour and the London Poor, looked as though he would be one of the also-rans of Victorian literature. To listen, click here [1:46].

2. To middle-class Victorians, London’s slums were strictly off-limits – the city’s” secret shame”. What took Mayhew into these areas to explore working-class lives?Find out by clicking here [3:21].

3.  How were Mayhew’s first reports received by the reading public? Hear how his project developed by clicking here [2:50].

4. Mayhew’s project added up to two million words in the end, so what was he looking for as he explored the habitat of London’s poor, notebook in hand? Click here to listen [2:05].

5. What were Mayhew’s working methods and how did he capture the lives of the poor on the page? Robert Douglas-Fairhust explains here [1:36].

6. What sort of people did Mayhew take off the streets to interview? Is it true that he had a “Dickensian” eye for character? Click here to find out [1:50].

7. Mayhew put the poor centre-stage, perhaps for the first time. What attitude to the poor comes through from his writing? Robert Douglas-Fairhurst explores this question here[2:06].

8. To the Victorians, was poverty natural and inevitable or the result of an economic system? Find out more about this central question by clicking here [2:55].

9. What kind of a prose stylist is Mayhew? Find out by clicking here [2:27].

10. What impact did Mayhew’s writing have on his contemporaries? Robert Douglas-Fairhurst assesses this in this concluding audio clip [3:45].